“”Good to know my nation’s foreign policy was in the hands of a Palpatine fanboy. THOSE REBELS WERE JUST LOOKING FOR A HANDOUT!...I honestly can’t believe I live in a world where fartsniffers like Kristol and Tom Friedman still manage to flourish. Why haven’t these men been dropped down a manhole? Who keeps giving them money? I have no faith in anything.

Wingnut welfare refers to jobs or deals offered to conservatives on the basis of ideological purity rather than talent or experience. Are you surrounded by yes-men and lackeys and feel under political threat? No need to toss reporters into jail for daring to criticize Dear Leader—that's what public relations is for! You see, in "Real Democracies™" you just slander real journalists and incentivise shills. The term was coined in 2005 by blogger Jane Hamsher, who used it in reference to Pajamas Media.[2] It has since become a popular term among liberal bloggers.

Wingnut welfare typically describes positions at conservative publishing houses, opinion journals, and websites. However, not all such positions are considered wingnut welfare. The term is generally applied to those positions or deals which are divorced from free-market business principles. Put simply, wingnut welfare recipients are not expected to generate profit or even make any money at all, but rather, to act as "loss leaders" in the promotion of right-wing ideas to the masses. The wingnut circuit isn't functionally different from the old (or current) Soviet propaganda apparatus.

Carson had pretty amazing fundraising numbers for a guy that walks around with his eyes closed. There's been speculation that Carson's whole Presidential campaign is a scam, with millions of dollars in donations being spent and recycled by advertising, bulk mailing, and other PR companies.[3] If there was ever a case of someone using the race to the White House for personal profit (or, like so many failed Republican candidates, becoming a paid commentator for Fox News), this is it. When asked about whether he'd settle for a VP slot, he said "I'm not looking for a job."[4] Yeah, except for the job of becoming the President of the Fucking United States.

She is an agitator. She doesn't appeal to many, but she offends millions. She knows that pissing off the left is a great way to keep herself in the spotlight. She doesn't have to appeal to anyone on the right, she can maintain her celebrity by manipulating the left.

A truly odious example. Received a high-ranking job at the Family Research Council, even though he was only in his early twenties, presumably for no reason other than being the eldest son of the Duggar family. This backfired massively when certain facts about young Josh and his contact with police and his younger sisters at an earlier age came to light, along with a paid account for the adultery facilitating website, Ashleymadison.com.[5]

Stephen Moore

Chief economist of the Heritage Foundation despite having so many factual mistakes in his writings the Kansas City Star stated it could no longer print his work. His PolitiFact score has never been above "Half-true".[6]

One of the most commonly-printed conservative columnists, and a lifelong (literally from the womb) recipient of wingnut welfare. Pretty much any one of his columns can be summed up as "DAE LIBERALS ARE SO SMUG"

America's own Baghdad Bob. A fantasy novelist turned "political writer", he spams pro-Sanders articles on Salon and HuffPo just to profit from delusional Bernouts. He likes to ramble into a camera for 10-20 minutes about how Bernie is going to DOMINATE IowaNevadaSouth Carolinahe's going to sweep Super Tuesdaylosing the nomination means that Bernie just won the White House etc. (he also does the Elliot Rodger thing with the eyes[7]). His support of Sanders is nothing more than anti-Clintonism.[8]

He used to be all about aliens in the 90's, back when that was the thing. Then came his 'non-partisan' phase during the Bush years, claiming both sides are evil. Now he's a full-blown, authoritarian sycophant. (Well, Clinton has the Reptilian, Illuminati, Free Mason, Clockwork Elf, and Bilderberg vote on lock, so it's really no surprise she blah blah) Guess he just goes where the gullible money is. Non-Americans might know Alex from his cameo in Waking Life.

Wrote the empirical proof that the rich are taxed enough alreaHAHAHAHAHA. When has a politician ever listened to an economist if it doesn't suit his agenda? Art Laffer is the guy who, in 2007, when asked if a recession is coming said "the US economy has never been in better shape!"[9] Also, his own proof (which doesn't actually prove anything) shows that government spending is sometimes a good thing. Economics has to be the only field where you can be dead wrong and still have a lucrative career.

After years of struggling as a sportscaster he finally found his bread and butter. Not a surprise that Rushbo's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, is the single largest "independent contractor" of the Heritage Foundation, receiving $2,236,555 from the think tank in 2013.

A blogger employed at The Atlantic. Managed to get hired as an economics writer in spite of the fact that she has no expertise in economics. She now writes at Bloomberg, much to the dismay of Barry Ritholtz.

The eccentric peer has always refused to cough up the name of the financier who paid him to "investigate" climate science. However, an investigation by DeSmog UK has established that the mystery man is Edgar Miller, a right-wing Texan who made his fortune in shale gas.[10]

According to the immodestly-titled "Norquist pledge", any revenue gained from the closing of tax loopholes must go toward lowering tax rates, and thus be revenue neutral (as Romney insisted with his "tax reform" proposal). We've been hearing this Abramoff/Nixon/Reagan/Bush crony cajole and bully and whine for decades, but nobody has the spine to tell Norquist to fuck off. He's just another corrosive influence on politics for personal gain.

Take archaic assertions about women (which sound an awful lot like redpill arguments), dress them up with $2 words, declare it a breakthrough in gender politics. Her latest, It's A Man's World, And It Always Will Be earned her a new generation of fans. (People think it's interesting that she would criticize feminism, seeing that she is a "female intellectual".) Although she calls herself a feminist, she seems more misanthropic than anything. However unlike say, Phyllis Schlafly, Paglia is, fundamentally, all about attention-seeking and saying radical contrarian things to seem smart. She occasionally writes incoherent rants for Salon (strange, considering it's something of a moonbat welfare provider) covering topics like: lesbian bed death, comparing Sarah Palin's word vomit to listening to some pretty excellent jazz, how global warming is not real, etc. etc.

Someone loves her enough to subsidize her family tooling around in a Hummer limousine.[11] But wait, it gets dumber. Remember when Bristol Palin, daughter of national oddity Governor Palin, was on Dancing with the Stars? When the audience was asked to call in and vote, she won in a landslide-and it was determined that Republicans, hoping to raise her Q rating so it might rub off on her mother in that election, brigaded the show: They used their campaign's robo-call system to flood the lines with votes for Bristol and swarmed the website.[12][13]

Star Parker

Switched from actual welfare to wingnut welfare after realizing it paid better. A combination of wingnut welfare and tokenism who spends most of her time claiming that the African-American community (except her, naturally) is brainwashed and needs to WAKE UP!!!

Ron would often add earmarks to bills that were guaranteed to pass, siphoning money to his state, and then he would vote against those bills, just to show ideological purity. Which actually makes him an even worse hypocrite than the majority of congress! This is the same "maverick" who holds moneybombs every other weekend—including his own birthday and Labor Day (because "Ron Paul" is the first name we associate with everything Labor Day is about). His son's presidential money bombs were really sad—especially toward the end, where he would continuously struggle to raise a paltry $50k over the course of a week.

The gravy train began after he published his first book at age 20, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, a book with every innuendo against the supposed liberal bias of colleges that conservatives want to hear. Has made a career out of this kind of "political analysis" since then.

Makes quite a bit of money off of conservative activists and websites for being a prominent New Deal denialist despite not having even a formal degree in economics or history and being heavily criticized by those who do.

Bruce Tinsley

Creator of Mallard Fillmore, the primal scream in comic strip form. His strip is put on Opinion pages as a balance to Doonesbury in some papers.

Tea Party supporters are more on the fringe than Indies and most Republicans, and yet Trump (along with all the other 2016 Presidential candidates) has converted them to the perception that he, a former Clinton supporter, is the second coming of George Wallace, and not just the most undeserving billionaire of all time.

Founder and editor-in-chief of failed technology blog, The Kernel, Milo was able to parlay his failure (along with his ability to regurgitate anti-feminist 4chan memes and stale MRA arguments) into a managing editor position at Breitbart.com's tech vertical. As Milo has repeatedly displayed a fundamental ignorance on the subject of technology and video games, his appointment aligns perfectly with Breitbart's high journalistic standards.

Once the publisher of choice for conservative intellectuals, Regnery Publishing has become a clearing house for every right-wing commentator with a pulse and a dream. Among the authors published by Regnery are Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin, Dinesh D'Souza, Steve Milloy and Chuck Norris. Regnery is known for poor production values, selling books to affiliated book clubs to artificially inflate sales, and less-than-friendly contracts.[14]

Salem Radio Network is the home of quite a few partisan hacks who manage to keep their jobs despite being horribly wrong on nearly every prediction they bother to make[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] or voicing opinions so atrocious that anyone with standards would have fired most of them long ago,[22][23][24][25] and they rarely receive even a slap on the wrist for their stupidity.

The online branch of the National Review (arguably a source of wingnut welfare itself) is home to many hack writers. While Jonah Goldberg is the most notorious, a far more egregious example can be found in Kathryn Jean Lopez, who was made an editor despite the frequent spelling and grammar errors present in her own posts.

While about as pathetic as you can get while still remaining at least slightly notable, it does still have many writers who are given a home there despite (or perhaps because of) their incoherent rambling and general insanity.

Whether you're a racist former US Representative (Tom Tancredo), a washed-up character actor (Robert Davi[wp]), an actual FBI agent provocateur (Brandon Darby[wp]) or failed tech blogger (see above), if you toe the line on populist conservative orthodoxy and can write poorly reasoned, hyperbolic, Manichean sentences easily understood by the more ignorant swaths of the American Right, then Breitbart.com has a place for you.[26][27][28][29] Through Breitbart.com, millionaire owner Stephen Bannon[wp] has emerged as one of the more significant Daddy Warbucks of the reactionary right, and his largess appears to know no benefactor too disreputable or too discredited. So long as long as they adhere to his populist, anti-intellectual, far-right worldview, then they can post whatever crosses their minds in his echo chamber.

Most wingnut welfare comes from the private sector. However, during the Bush administration there were numerous high-profile cases of individuals receiving money or public sector positions on the basis of their beliefs. Here are a few of the more notable cases:

In 2005, the Department of Education signed a contract with PR firm Ketchum to promote No Child Left Behind. As part of their campaign, Ketchum paid $240,000 to commentator Armstrong Williams to promote NCLB on his television and radio programs.[30] In the wake of the scandal, the White House disavowed any knowledge of the payoff, and Williams was released from his contract with Tribune Media Services. While Williams apologized, he also claimed that the only reason his conflict of interest was controversial was because he was black.[31]

Deutsch, who worked on Bush's reelection campaign, was appointed to NASA's press office. A creationist, Deutsch attempted to have the word "theory" added to every instance of the phrase "Big Bang" on NASA's website. He also allegedly kept the press from talking to Dr. James Hansen, an expert on global warming.[32] He was released from his position in 2006 after blogger Nick Anthis discovered that Deutsch had lied on his résumé and had never actually graduated college.[33] He later claimed that the only reason his appointment was controversial was because he was a Christian.[34] (Noticing a pattern here?)

Perhaps the most disastrous examples of wingnut welfare occurred in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. The problems stemmed from James O'Beirne, the White House liaison to the Pentagon.[36] O'Beirne's interviews of prospective CPA staffers included questions about their political beliefs and voting records. As a result, the CPA was largely staffed by loyal Republicans with little or no relevant experience. Among the more egregious appointments was Jay Hallen, a 24 year-old who was placed in charge of reopening the Iraqi stock market despite having no financial experience whatsoever.[37]